The present invention relates generally to drinking straws used typically to drink beverages from bottles, cans, cups and the like, and more particularly to a design and apparatus that allows multiple people to share and/or taste the same beverage without the risk of transmitting virus, bacteria or other germs through use of the same straw by several people.
Although there have been a number of inventions related to regulating flow rate through a straw, most straws are designed for use by a single person. Sharing the same straw across multiple people is unhygienic, since the suction end is in contact with the mouth/saliva of the person consuming the beverage and has high risk of transmitting germs (including those that cause common cold, flu, H1N1 and other infectious diseases) from one user to another. Design of current beverage cup lids does not allow multiple straws to be inserted into the same cup forcing single person consumption from each beverage cup. Moreover, since straws available in restaurants tend to be of same color, size and material, they are indistinguishable from one another, this also leads to the same problem of transmitting germs if multiple people use the same straw as they share. Even if multiple straws are used, each person has to either withdraw his/her straw or keep track of it between multiple sips. Due to the limited storage/holding space available for beverage containers in automobiles, it will be great for families to share the drink from the same beverage container without transmitting germs. Given the current economy, a multi-person beverage sharing/tasting straw provides a more economical and fun-way for families to share the pleasure of drinking beverages. Particularly in emerging markets and countries where a single cup of beverage could equal several days' pay for some people and thus sharing a cup enables multiple people to taste/enjoy the beverage without fear of infection. In addition, readily available straws are indistinguishable from each other and discarded after one use. Given the potential for families to use their own multi-person straws within the same set of individuals, a multi-person straw also has the potential to be recycled within families, thus reducing the total consumption of plastic straws and to a smaller extent, due to sharing, fewer beverage cups thus promoting a “greener” way to consume beverages.
As such, what is needed is a design and apparatus that allows multiple people to share/taste a beverage from the same beverage cup/container, by providing multiple suction ends while allowing each suction-end to be differentiable, so multiple people can share/taste the beverage, each distinguishing and using their own suction end, either one-time or in a re-use mode, thus minimizing risk of spreading germs.